Why Boeing Built A Real-Life Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter
Science fiction is littered with iconic vehicles and starships, but few are more recognizable than the X-wing. Well, maybe the TIE Fighter, but most people prefer to associate with freedom fighters and their vehicles. Regardless, the X-wing is so synonymous with "Star Wars" that Boeing once built not one but two "real-life" X-wing starfighters. Why? Because of the power of the Force, that's why.
In 2019, Boeing partnered with Walt Disney to commemorate the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in Walt Disney World. For its contribution, Boeing dressed up two CV2 Cargo Air Vehicles (CAVs) as X-wings and flew them over the heads of attendees. Of course, the CAVs could only slowly hover; they couldn't jump to lightspeed, and their wings were non-functional and stuck in the recognizable X-shaped attack position. Oh, and Disney's imagineers set up ultraviolet spotlights to mask the drones and only illuminate the X-wing shells.
The drones weren't exactly life-size (their wingspans only stretched 20.2 feet), but they were so far away nobody could really tell. Currently, one of the CV2 CAVs, X-wing shell and all, is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. There, you can see the drone and its shell without the ultraviolet lights to get a better look at how the machine worked.
X-wing cosplay was the CV2's first and last great hurrah
Boeing began work on the CV2 CAV in 2017 to serve as remote-controlled delivery drones. The CV2 was intended to carry 500 pounds of cargo, but it also found life as a testbed for Boeing's engineers. According to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the CV2 CAV became the "first remotely piloted large eVTOL (electrical vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft to be flown in support of a commercial operation in the United States." That operation, of course, was wowing crowds while dressed as X-wings.
Unfortunately, two Boeing 737 Max airplanes were involved in fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, forcing the company to ground its entire fleet to fix the problem (and there were plenty of issues that needed fixing). And in 2020, COVID-19 brought the entire world to a veritable standstill, which resulted in, among other things, a decline in airplane ticket sales. These two issues essentially forced Boeing to close its NeXt division, the group in charge of projects like the CV2 CAV.
The irony of this whole situation is that COVID-19 partially kickstarted a push for autonomous delivery drones and similar technologies. Now there are got drones in China that deliver everything from lunches to hospital supplies, and the U.S. Army is testing laser weapons that can shoot down potentially dangerous drones. Boeing being forced to shutter its drone development wing right before the explosion in drone technology can best be described as a cosmic amount of bad luck. There could have been fleets of CV2 CAVs shipping military supplies and entertaining theme park attendees.